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October 01, 2007

So, I thought I would be the coolest kid on the block (not to be confused with new kid on the block) and actually pay something for the new Radiohead album. Thought is the operative word. I must say that it's cool that they are allowing you to name your price, and even cooler that they actually kept this under wraps until 10 days before the release. That's one way of working with (not suing) the torrent generation.

But, then I got this verification message. Verified by Visa? Is this real? You want my credit card number (again), my name (again), and the last 4 digits of my social, too? Fuck you. You had me until social. Fraudulent or not, I've never seen that shit before. So, I'll take my new album for free, thanks. But good job on everything else. I was only going to pay you 5 bucks, anyway.

August 15, 2007

Never one to shy from a semantic debate, the blogosphere emerges again with a new question...

What is Innovation, really?

Digitas' Jon Burg, with a push from Crayon's Greg Verdino, has called for a simple one-liner, a single sentence description of the word. Innovation is...and the rest of us fill in the blank.

From Cam Beck, dictionary.com describes innovation as "something new or different introduced." Bleh.

I think for many people innovation in reality means the ignorance of what other people are doing. But maybe that's just me being cynical. I'd say it's as simple as solving problems in a significantly more useful way. Maybe that's a little boring, but fuck it, I'm allowed to do that from time to time.

Of course, to be an innovator, you'd have to solve problems in a significantly more useful way consistently.

UPDATE:Katie's having her own discussion on innovation. It's the goodness. Be sure to read Rob's comment, too. He's wrong, but at least he says it with conviction.

August 13, 2007

When it gets really busy, that's the time when it's hardest to remember who you're there to please. It's not your boss, or your client, and especially not yourself. It's the people that make your clients matter. If you keep that in mind, all those other things seem to fall in place a lot faster. And if they don't, you're probably in a situation you shouldn't be in. Either that, or you weren't listening hard enough.

July 24, 2007

In a recent Ad Age article, the woefully wrong Al Ries laid out on Playboy for extending its line of nekid products into the digital realm.

"Playboy is digitizing its entire archive. All 636 issues of the
magazine will be rendered page-by-page on six disks, one for each
decade. Price: $100 per disk.

What a mistake.
Every time a new medium arrives, older media players think, "What an
opportunity to extend our franchise." So magazines and newspapers and
radio and TV outlets are jumping all over themselves to digitize their
brands."

He goes on to explain how Playboy shares are half what they were when the company went public in 1971, and how the 2.9 billion dollar company still lost 75 million last year.

Right. It isn't a branding problem. It isn't a relevancy problem. It isn't a conservatism issue. Nor does it have anything to do with Hefner's oddities or bad press. Not the creepiness of an elderly man dating seven twenty-something blondes. Nope. It's because they're moving along down the digital highway. Ideological curmudgeonism? Check.

And Ries continues,"Every print publication thinks it needs to expand into the internet to
be successful. It's exactly the opposite. Stay where you are and launch
a new brand on the web."

What the? Are you? Can he? Did he?

Well, give him points for shock value, I guess. And he goes on to failures that other companies have had in crossing on from one medium to another. He did get it right that those failures generally happen when those shifts are mishandled, but that hardly means that it shouldn't happen.

It's never a winning strategy to allow your brand to become irrelevant. No way would it make sense for the New York Times to waste away only on paper rather than remaining relevant to a class of people like myself who no longer reads the back of dead trees. I love the NY Times, but I haven't picked up any kind of paper in more than a year.

Yet Ries says, "Putting a magazine on radio or TV never worked either. Literally dozens
of publications tried to take their successful print formula into the
radio and TV arena. They all failed." An argument based solely in deception, as if the the printed word in print and internet form is the same as a magazine taken to newscast.

More than that, the idea that brands can't crossover from one medium to another is bullshit. Would that argument also follow to NBC or CBS? Should they have just stayed in radio? Or ABC, should they have just stayed in TV and not gone to radio?

Now, I agree, many of these traditional media sites have had a serious learning curve, but I'd still be the first to tip my cap to them for working hard and spending millions to stay relevant to a new generation of people only willing to accept traditional media in an adaptive form. To argue them back into their shells, away from change, is insane, idiotic and plainly wrong.

*Update 2: Peter Kim also didn't agree with the article. He cracked me up with the line, "I guess the worst thing you can be is in the middle - it's refreshing to hear a voice that's consistently wrong." Kudos for that one...

*Update 4: The lovely Laura Ries showed up in the comments to explain her pops' comments further. She pointed to this post in her blog where she said this:

"Newspaper brands never made it big on radio. Radio brands never made it
big on broadcast television. Broadcast TV brands never made it big on
cable. Cable brands never made it big with magazines. And newspaper,
magazine, radio, and television brands never made it big on the
Internet."

July 12, 2007

Advertising is all about having the most amount of people being slightly more than indifferent to you. It's really hard to make people love you. So, that's where we are. Lots of people. Slightly positive indifference. There you go.

Job well done, Ford. And to you, Sony. And you Old Navy, and Room Store, and Mervyn's, Dillard's and Sprint. To all of you, and many, many more, thanks for making me not care just a little more.

July 10, 2007

Well, we can all thank Sam, area-supervisor for Kohl's for giving me another giggle, and another chance to talk about the super-est of super-awesome retail stores. The Kohl's emails and comments are finally starting to slow down more than 6 months later. But luckily, angry guys like Sam are still sticking around. I rarely even respond anymore, but Sam accused me of deleting his comments, so I thought I'd pull this one out for a post.

(FYI: Sam, open your eyes, guy, they're still there in the comment thread of this post)

And, I'll add some paragraphing cause, you know, I can...

"You know what I find funny? The fact that you continue to try to get
your name "out there" by reliving something that happened 7 months ago.
What's wrong Paul? Did the buzz finally die and so you had to recap the
whole debacle so that your name appeared again on the front page of
searches on Kohls and Google Alerts about Kohls? I also find it funny
that in this recap you didn't include some of the comments that
customers had left praising their local Kohls. That wouldn't help your
story out would it?

Well, here's something new for you. Check out who
Forbes is interviewing as one of it's Top 100 companies to work for.
That's right, Kohls employees. When you own almost 900 stores there are
going to be issues on some level. I find it funny that employees
complain about the pay when they are told when the job offer is being
made exactly how much they will be paid. Also, check out which
company's stock is constantly rising. Yup, you guessed it. Kohls. And
with the new Vera Wang line debuting this Fall it will only get better.
We will have to wait and see how long you actually leave this comment
up since I guess you were too insulted by someone making a strong
argument against you to leave my last comment up."

Sam, you may have confused a strong argument with a loud one. When you juice up your advertising spend like that, sales go up. It's kind of the way it works. We'll see how it goes in the long run. That said, I really could care less whether or not Kohl's is doing well. I have no vested interest.

But, from hundreds of comments from Kohl's employees left here and elsewhere, I've seen an overwhelmingly negative sentiment. I don't feel the need to highlight all the good comments because, well, there just weren't enough of them to warrant it.

Good for you for keeping up, Sam. But, get over it. It's just Kohl's. It's not like it happened at Mervyn's or something. Then, the world would truly be over.

July 05, 2007

The brilliant Word-of-Mouth guru Andy Sernovitz is having a bit of a contest. It's pretty simple, too. Just go here, and send Andy your stories of great word-of-mouth campaigns. The less money spent, and the less corporate they are, the better. And, if it's good, you'll get a free bottle of Avalon or Capolan wine. If you're not eligible (like you Austin and Max), then he'll send something else. Like maybe a hat or a coupon for free french fries. Do it!